UFC 158 attendance, gate and bonuses

March 17, 2013

MMA Junkie reports that UFC 158 at the Bell Centre in Montreal drew 20,145 fans for a gate of $3.71 million. Dana White revealed the figures at last night’s post-fight press conference along with the bonuses.

UFC 158 ranks fourth among six events that were held at the venue. UFC 83 (Serra v. GSP), the night that GSP regained the welterweight title and started his current reign was the main event that night. It scored 21,390 fans for a $5.1 million gate.

UFC 124 drew the most fans with 23,152 for a $4.5 million gate. It ranked third behind UFC 97: Redemption, which featured Anderson Silva versus Thales Leites and Chuck Liddell versus Shogun Rua.

The bonuses announced last night were as follows:

KO of the night: Jake Ellenberger
Fight of the night: Hendricks-Condit

There was no submission of the night. But, if there was a night to hand out multiple KOs of the night, it should have been this one as Jordan Mein and T.J. Dillashaw had impressive stoppages. Ellenberger, Hendricks and Condit received the now standard $50K each.
Payout Perspective:

With the hype, its interesting that UFC 158 ranked 4th among the events held at Bell Centre. Still, the events in front of it were impressive as two involved GSP and the third had Silva and Liddell. Montreal does not get shortchanged with the star power at the top of its cards in its events.

You would be hard pressed to find a card with a better top 3 fights than this card. Ellenburger/Nate could have been a headliner on many of the tv events.

Weezy02 on
March 18th, 2013 7:28 AM

Just for my fellow boxing fans: Attendance for the Tim Bradley – Ruslan Provodnikov world championship fight on HBO Saturday was 2,256 for a live gate of $172,914.

Jason Cruz on
March 18th, 2013 9:22 AM

@Weezy02 – Was that at the Home Depot Center in Carson or the Sports Arena?

Great fight I wonder how it did in terms of ratings.

Of course the bigger news today maybe that Golden Boy is no longer working with HBO which may shift power to Showtime.

Weezy02 on
March 18th, 2013 12:09 PM

It was held at the Home Depot Center from what I was told. Yeah, that HBO/GBP news has HUGE ramifications for pro boxing in the United States. This is not good if you are a pro boxing fan here in America. Also, the news dropped that Channel 5 in England is getting out of the boxing business. Not good.

Sampson Simpson on
March 18th, 2013 1:04 PM

HUGE ramifications? What are they?

Weezy02 on
March 18th, 2013 3:07 PM

Boxing having a more fractured landscape with many top fighters having additional hurdles getting of the way of them fighting each other. From what I’ve seen, the general reaction by most in the boxing media thus far has been that this is a negative for the sport here in the United States. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the sky is falling in the least bit. I’m just saying this is a negaive development. My hope is that cooler heads prevail and this doesn’t last long at all.

Weezy02 on
March 18th, 2013 3:20 PM

Also, by clearly having dividing lines, fighter compensation could go down. The two premium cable networks that carry boxing won’t be bidding against each other any longer.

codemaster on
March 18th, 2013 3:29 PM

When asked in the post-fight scrum–Dana White said the PPV numbers for UFC 158 were trending with Silva vs. Sonnen (925,000 PPV) which would be a good number.

Time will tell–then Dave Meltzer will tell.

codemaster on
March 18th, 2013 3:41 PM

Jason Cruz:

“Montreal does not get shortchanged with the star power at the top of its cards in its events.”

This is true, but the middle and bottom of the cards very often are not stellar.

UFC 158 was essentially a WW tournament, which has been the elite division in the UFC from the beginning. (LW is also stacked with talent)

But when GSP has been on previous cards in Montreal, the cards would be thinner, relying almost solely upon GSP’s drawing power.

GSP’s next fight should be in Vegas according to Dana White.

Sampson Simpson on
March 18th, 2013 6:10 PM

@weezy so basically you stated no facts and just sentiments about nothing in reality.

Thanks for clearing up the “HUGE” ramifications

Weezy02 on
March 19th, 2013 1:42 AM

For fellow boxing fans: The Hopkins-Cloud fight on HBO World Championship Boxing had an average audience of 1.2 million viewers. It was the second largest audience thus far in 2013 for HBO boxing.